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Sorting through chaos — analyzing Twitter data
By Anna Boiko-Weyrauch@AnnaBoikoW Tweets are tempting but tricky for data journalists. “Twitter data is probably some of the hardest data you can work with,” Jacob Harris, senior software architect at The New York Times, said at the “Capturing and analyzing Twitter feeds” session. Harris said tweets are hard to collect and analyze, and the tools available at dev.twitter.com are not…
Read MoreThe story behind failing government monopolies
By Jon McClure @JonRMcClure Paul Overberg of USA Today and Brad Guilmino of HNTB Corporation discussed the potential stories coming from the decline of two long-monopolized government services: road maintenance and mail delivery. Though they may seem like monolithic enterprises, in actuality there are lots of competing stakeholders. In many cases, these systems represent microcosms of dysfunction…
Read MoreRendering real-time
By Jon McClure @JonRMcClure What is real-time anyway? The Guardian’s Alastair Dant discussed the concept in terms of a continuous feed of information and provided a few tips on how journalists should approach it during “Dealing with real-time data.” Chaos is raw real-time data, Dant said. To render it journalists must first conceptualize the continuous…
Read MoreMoving a story beyond the data dump
By Hilary Niles @nilesmedia Some of the pithier annectdotes from this year’s conference surely belong to Tony DeBarros, Ron Nixon and Ben Welsh, for their presentations during “Making sure you tell a story.” Their three presentations, in rapid succession, covered ground from story craft to news strategy to robotics, and still managed to present a…
Read MoreYear in CAR
By Jessica Pupovac@jessicapupovac IRE Executive Director Mark Horvit and training director Megan Luther led a whirlwind tour of 25 data-driven stories during their “Year in CAR 2011” presentation, paying special attention to those projects that reporters can and should attempt to “do at home.” Highlights in the “do-it-yourself” category included: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s piece on…
Read MoreFighting for open records in Spain
By Hilary Niles @nilesmedia Spain is an “information black hole,” journalist Mar Cabra said during the Against All -Spanish- Odds. She and software developer David Cabo are taking suggestions on how to fix that. Among the European countries with a population more than 1 million, Cabra said, Spain is the only one not to have…
Read MoreApproaching business journalism with a data state of mind
By Hilary Niles@nilesmedia When you think of a company, don’t think of something with a physical presence, like a storefront or a corporate headquarters. That’s just not how companies are organized these days, said Chris Taggart of OpenCorporates.org. And in many cases, he said, there’s simply no single entity that encompasses all of a corporation’s…
Read MoreTools, slides and links from NICAR12
IRE will be collecting tipsheets from the conference and storing them in the Resource Center for members to search and download. Chrys Wu, a journalist and engagement editor, is collecting online resources from the conference, as she did during the 2011 CAR Conference. Here is the beginning of her online post: One of the most popular posts…
Read MoreDay one highlights, one reporter’s perspective
Patrick Sweet, a CAR reporter at the The News Journal in Wilmington, Del., and formerly at The Citizens’ Voice, shared some of his favorit sessions from the conference on his blog. Here are his thoughts on NewsCamp: Investigating text in the wild and Locating the story: The latest in mapping as well as other panels. His…
Read MoreHow journalists can target tablets
By Kyle Deas @KyleDeas News organizations looking to enter the mobile space are confronted with a bewildering array of formats, devices, and operating systems. In a late-day session on Thursday, Daniel Lathrop and Will Sullivan talked through some of the options and the reasons why newsrooms could take one approach or another. Lathrop is the…
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